I don't want to put iTunes on my new machine. iTunes is bloaty, buggy, and poorly designed.

But I have an iPod (which I use primarily for audio books and podcasts). My Vista machine recognized it as an iPod when I plugged it in (to charge it up). Can I just use Windows to move mp3's onto it, without using iTunes?

Has anybody done this?

Yes.

I do not use iTunes. I use MediaMonkey. Check to ensure your software of choice is cool with iPods, but these days it's hard to find something that ISN'T because of the way they dominate the market.

No need to use iTunes. You're fine without it.

ooops, I should clarify. No, you can't just drag and drop. Apple uses a goofy file sorting system to ensure that won't work. So, you'll need some other piece of software. Tons and tons and tons of iTunes alternatives out there to choose from, some very streamlined and basic.

Great article in Download.com about iTunes alternatives.

http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10104294-12.html

I love Mediamonkey. I don't have an Ipod, but the software is great for tagging, playing, and organizing your music even without one.

When my drive that had all my MP3s died, I used Anapod Explorer and Anapod CopyGear to pull them back off my iPod. Since my iPod was full, there was some stuff that wasn't on it that I lost, but it would have been much worse without it.

If I'd just plugged straight into iTunes, it might have tried to wipe the songs from the iPod, too.

I use iTunes for the most part, but in this case, the 3rd party stuff saved my ass.

I use Music Rescue to move songs from my iPods to different PCs. I had a virus that was taking up my entire PC drive, until I could figure out what was going on, I backed up every mp3 and iTune to DVD.

I had to reboot my Video iPod for the first time today. Freaked me out. Didn't lose anything.

I find that owning thousands of CDs and loading them into one's iPod works OK.

Thirding the love for MediaMonkey here. It's got all the ease-of-use features that made iTunes popular in the first place, but better-implemented, without the crappy ill-designed bits, and with a load of extra functions as well.

The only way in which it's not emphatically better than iTunes is the way it handles podcasts, but that's a minor irritation, rather than a dealbreaker.

If you have the hundreds of hours to spare. Ripping scores of gigabytes worth of CDs takes a while.

Agreed. It led me to keep iTunes around just for my Podcast subscriptions. I fire up iTunes once a week or two and get my casts. Otherwise, it's all Mediamonkey for me. I'm very glad I switched.

I just mooted all-a-yalls. Sansa Fuze on sale for $68 (8gb), and I've been wanting to try one of those.

I like what Sansa is doing -- building their brand around the memory disks and quality hardware, instead of bloatware or music stores. They even now have drag-and-drop functionality for putting music or any files on it.

I may still use MediaMonkey, but I don't see much of a point. My big things are, in order of priority:

1. Audiobooks, which can use the audible.com tool.
2. Podcasts, which I will continue to struggle with; and'
3. Music, but I will not tolerate any form of DRM anymore, so it's Amazon MP3 all the way for me.

I think I was made to be a constant brand-switcher.

Have you tried eMusic? It's not quite as comprehensive as Amazon, but the pricing is hard to beat, and there's an awful lot of absolutely terrific music on the site. Definitely one of the best legal-download sites out there, and completely DRM-free.

http://www.mp3sparks.com/

Vague legality, DRM free downloads for much cheaper than any other site, supports the Russian mafia.

What's so bad about iTunes?

I use it and have never had a problem-- it organizes my music alphabetically for me, I can drag and drop things into my iPod or a CD project... the thing's been extremely user friendly for me.

It's total bloatware that rapes your system resources, isn't friendly with non-iPods, and doesn't have near the customization abilities of the many other pieces of software that do exactly the same thing iTunes does. Plus, in rare cases iTunes libraries have been known to get corrupted (especially when upgrading), borking your digital music collection.

Oh, and I found that it was kind of crap at ripping CDs.

iTunes introduced all kinds of bugs in my system, slowed down my computer, and asked to be updated about every week. Many times, the update was not directly iTunes driven, but had something to do with Quicktime or the iTunes store.

All of that, and it's not very customizable for what I want to do.

But yes, the songs were in alphabetical order, so they got that down. I'll give them that.

But to answer more directly, iTunes and Vista are like the Sith and the Jedi. I just got a new Vista machine and I'm not going to put iTunes on it.

Apple has shown and almost willful, propaganda-like desire not to address problems it's program has with Vista. In hindsight (with the marketing message they came out with), one can see why.

Well, I gotta Mac and it already came on the thing, so I'll roll with it for now.

I would totally use iTunes if I had a mac.